It's completely obvious that if the goal is a carnal relationship, then the connection has to be made face-to-face. But a meeting of minds is complete doable online.
Some of the reasons why people may be lonelier than before are smaller families, fewer people having families in the first place and longer life expectancy. There are a lot of old people living alone because their spouse died years ago.
Some people prefer it this way. For introverts, the times are good because having a social life mainly on the Internet allows for more fine-grained control of distance between oneself and others. However introverted you are, having a pool of Internet friends makes it possible to get your face time fix when you want it while allowing you time to recharge.
What strikes me as interesting in the lifestyles of many 10-20 years my junior is the increased individuality and better quality of information and influences they have access to compared to what was available in my youth. They're better able to tailor their lifestyles to their actual preferences as opposed to peer pressure. For extroverts such as you and I, there still are ample opportunities for IRL social interaction especially if you live in a decent-sized city. People often decry the lack of social skills enabled by excessive Internet use. But it should also be remembered how much better like-minded people are able to connect using technology than ever before.
When my daughter was in first and second grade, we lived in another district. In her class in the local school, there was a lot of bullying - even physical violence - that the teachers were not quite capable of doing anything about. She changed schools in third grade because her foreign language choice wasn't available in her local school. About six months later, we bought a house and moved to another area far away from where we lived. Her new school is much better but not ideal. She's had a couple of friends to hang out with during the 15-minute recesses there. But a lot of the girls in her class are similarly big on gossiping and exclusion and all that shit.
Her intellectual curiosity is through the roof and her mother and I haven't wanted to suppress it by not allowing her Internet access or restricting it too severely. I just don't see all that much value in seriously trying to become an accepted member of the popular girls' group and participating in their games. That's just some cavewoman legacy bullshit. As an adult, I'd much rather see her work independent than be mired in office politics in some typical female-dominated workplace. My daughter usually hangs out with some of the boys playing group games or a select couple of girls depending on whether they're available.
Minus the peer pressure, I see this as echo chambering and from a young age they are able to stay living in a world of immaturity as they suffer confirmation bias through tailored feeds. They can get everything they want and do and perhaps this is why I find a high rate of emotional and social immaturity in those who live so much of their life online as they can avoid anything they don't like.
Like minds yes but, what is liked? This is also the driver of extremism.
When it comes to bullying I find that people are much less capable to negotiate since the introduction of the concepts of safe zones and protected environments. Sure, physical violence should be curbed heavily but the world isn't going to be agreeable to those who are unable to endure some forms of adversity, criticism and assholes as, there will never be a future devoid of such. It is also likely that in many respects, the bullying is getting worse due to the types of digital communities that form as well as the way young people use social media and apps.
There are positives and negatives to all aspects of life but engineering them to avoid dealing with negatives rarely leads to well rounded personalities in my experience.
My perspective on safe zones and protected environments is that they are quite far and few in between in this country. Safe zones are a curiosity confined to American college campuses at least from a Finnish perspective. I've talked to a few Finnish people on Facebook who talked about needing safe spaces. All were transsexuals. I know one of them personally. I don't personally feel like telling them to suck it up because I know how badly some people treat transsexuals and how most people merely tolerate them. All of them have probably had to deal with more shit than I ever have.
There will always be adversity, conflicts and assholes. The world will never run out of those. But I don't think bullying in general is getting worse. Social media has introduced new forms of bullying but the thing with bullying on social media is that it always leaves a trace of evidence behind and it will be easy for the perps to be brought to justice if it's severe enough to be a crime.
I don't believe in "what does not kill you, will make you stronger". In most cases, injustice and violence, be it mental or physical, only leaves dysfunction behind. Yes, it's possible to fully recover and learn valuable lessons but how common is that?
Civilization is all about trying to engineer the negatives away. But that's a moot point anyway because one cannot help but deal with negatives.
I don't think they are even close to needed since there is very little adversity here as it is. What people claim as a hard life is much less so than not too long ago but it still impacts them as if they are mortally wounded. Life gets easier, the impression of pain stays the same.
I have a couple trans friends in the Helsinki region and they have had a relatively easy go of it considering those I knew who grew up in the 80s in Australia. When it comes to the tolerate, that is the same for anyone who is not part of whatever group the judge belongs. In Finland, I am tolerated.
And for the victim, it is a lifetime of potential searchable and shareable shame .
I agree but, it is also because rather than build tools to cope and heal, we tell people that they are victims. No matter who did the harm, it is up to the individual to take care of the aftermath.
It is a pity that it is the same negatives on repeat for most people.
I would like to add that the quality of conversation as well as the willingness to listen and be charitable with understanding views changes between online and face to face communication too. It is a completely different dynamic as one should expect.
That's a good point. When you have someone in front of you in the flesh, you are less likely to tell'em to fuck off if you disagree with them. :D
I was listening to a talk where two people who had a fiery and not overly useful debate on a podcast, met for another at a face to face panel and the changed dynamic of human form, meant that they could still disagree but, treated each other with much more humanity.
That's often the case if two people who've argued online meet in person. Yet, the vast majority of my encounters online have been free of any kind of animosity.